It is even more difficult to be a good official, and it is undoubtedly more difficult to be a good official and a clean official. In view of the greedy nature of human beings, throughout China's 2,000-year-old feudal dynasties, there are few Qing officials, many corrupt officials, and more those who have done nothing. It is no wonder that when Xiaolan was young, he issued such an exclamation: "Qing officials are rare, and corrupt officials are as many as the sand of the Yellow River." ”
Today, I would like to introduce you to a very special Qing official. Why special? Please read on.
Time came to April 1956, on this day, Lin Mou of Zhangjiadu Agricultural Society in Linhai City, Zhejiang Province, was carrying a hoe to Wangzhuang Mountain to open up the wilderness. After arriving at the place, Lin Spread His Arms and began to work, without thinking, a few hoes went down, and almost did not cut the hoe.
It turned out that he had dug up a hard rock. At first, the stone was covered with mud, Lin Mou did not know what it was, and after pouring some water to wash it, jin's dangling light flashed his eyes instantly. The stone of this hard state turned out to be a piece of gold.
So, he dug down again, but he didn't expect to dig more and more gold. Just before going back and filling the sack with gold, Lin Mou's actions were seen by the villagers in the village, and soon, the news of his digging up gold spread throughout the local area, and finally alarmed the cultural relics department.
Archaeologists soon arrived and cordoned off the site for salvage excavations. Sure enough, Wang Zhuangshan was an ancient tomb here, but the identity of the owner of the tomb archaeologists could not be determined at that time. At the same time, archaeologists also called on the villagers to send back the excavated cultural relics, when the folk customs were simple, and after the people of the Cultural Relics Bureau said that everyone gave up the idea of taking possession for themselves, they handed them over to the state. Together with the later excavations by archaeologists, there are a total of 107 gold artifacts.
With so many valuable funerary items, at first, archaeologists thought it was an imperial tomb. But as the excavations continued, when the bones of the owner of the tomb were finally exhumed, all the staff at the scene wondered. Why is the funerary product so magnificent, but the owner of the tomb does not even have a coffin, or wrapped in a straw mat for burial?
Through consulting the Linhai County Chronicle, archaeologists finally determined the identity of the owner of the tomb and learned the secret of why the burial materials and coffins in his tomb were so contrasting. Originally, the owner of this tomb was named Wang Shiqi, and in the 11th year of the Ming Wanli Calendar, he was admitted to the Jinshi, and later he was even more official to Chongqing Taishou, which can be described as a smooth career. At the same time, he was also a clean official.
Why are there so many funerary items in its tombs? Could it be that Wang Shiqi's Qing officials were just pretending? Non-also, in the 20th year of the Wanli Calendar, Japan launched the Wanli Korean War against Korea. As the suzerainty of Korea, the Ming Dynasty also sent troops to fight, and at that time, Wang Shiqi participated in the political campaign as the supervisor of the Ming army, which can be described as a great achievement, especially in crushing the second invasion of Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
Wang Shiqi, who has made such outstanding achievements, is still a clean official, how clean is he? All the money given to him by the imperial court was taken by him to help the poor. Even after his death, there was not even a coffin left, because there was no coffin, and finally he could only be buried wrapped in a straw mat.
This matter later reached the ears of Zhu Yijun, the Wanli Emperor, and such a patriotic general and a good official with two sleeves of clean wind actually had to wrap his body in a straw mat after his death, and it would not make the people of the world laugh in shame when he passed it out.
Therefore, Zhu Yijun immediately had Wang Shiqi's tomb repaired, and also stuffed a lot of gold and silver treasures into it. This kind of hindsight-like additional burial behavior has a special name in history, called "giving sacrifice and burial". Wang Shiqi also became one of the few people in the Ming Dynasty who enjoyed the honor of "giving sacrifices and burials".
Back in the modern era, the 107 gold artifacts unearthed in Wang Shiqi's tomb are valued at more than 1 billion according to archaeologists. Wang Shiqi couldn't enjoy it, and I had to say that the Wanli Emperor's hand was simply a good intention to do bad things. If historians do not investigate, perhaps the world still thinks that Wang Shiqi is a "superficial clean official", but behind the scenes, he is more greedy than anyone else.
Treat every clean official well, not only after his death, but also before his death. This is a truth that many feudal monarchs in the 2000 feudal dynasty did not understand. It is also because of this that in the end of each dynasty, there are always fewer and fewer qing officials, but corrupt officials and corrupt officials are rampant. Perhaps this is the limitation of every feudal dynasty, and it is also the sad song of every qing official in feudal history.